


Act Five

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Without a Clue (1988)
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 18:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the Hindu chap said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Act Five

**Author's Note:**

> For JWP 2013 Prompt # **19:** "A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave." - Mohandas Gandhi.
> 
> I chose a Holmes version that seemed appropriate, since Gandhi and this Watson were portrayed by the same actor.

I’d only wanted a figurehead, someone who could look the part and parrot back what he was told to say and leave me free to make my deductions and solve crimes. An actor, I thought; one not famous enough to be readily identifiable on the street, someone who’d be willing to take up lodgings with me and work at all hours of the day or night. He needn’t be one of the great proclaimers – music-hall was about the level of sophistication for the character I’d hastily invented.

Alas, the _demi-monde_ of the theater is not conducive to men of strong character, sterling reputation, nor even simple nerve. Drunkards, fornicators, gamblers – and those are their good qualities.  I prided myself on selecting one of the least offensive of that number; at least Reginald Kincaid was not a pimp, an opium fiend, or a bully. But his willingness to lie, evade, cheat, and commit petty theft in the name of taking the easiest route with his life repulsed me – nearly as much as his tendency toward improvisation from his set lines and actions constantly hampered my work.

I should have gotten angrier with him than I would, but did not. Because for all the man’s irritating ways, Reginald Kincaid was irrepressibly likeable in a way I am not (and as Sherlock Holmes is not either). He was also friendly, cheery, amusingly profane, and distressingly intimate on short notice (his Cockney roots showing through the refined mien he presented as my sleuth). And the man did indeed know his craft; it was always startling to see him settle into the character of Sherlock Holmes and _become_ the man at a moment’s notice, to the point that I nearly believed in the fellow myself.

The most worrisome quality, however, was Kincaid’s arrant cowardice.

As both a doctor and a soldier I had gained the nerve and stomach to deal with the kind of ghastly scenes that are inevitable when one assists the police with puzzling murders. Such were clearly rare in the world of the stage. The man didn’t even like to be in my room, because my service revolver was in my desk drawer and it “made him nervous” to know it was there! (When Kincaid was at his worst, I would take grim pleasure in imagining him at the tender mercy of my old Sergeant at Netley.)  At crime scenes, especially, it did “Sherlock Holmes” no credit to have him turn ashen and sweaty at the mere presence of a dead body, nor to turn positively green when asked to examine the corpse.

And I thought the man would bolt like a rabbit when I finally was forced to tell him about Professor Moriarty. He began to lock his bedroom door at night, and it was all he could do to remain in character at a crime scene. (“Not one of his,” I’d mutter just to make him stop looking like a terrified actor; he would have fled if he’d known just how often I’d lied to him.) For all I knew he was going to leave anyway, when the aftermath of the John Clay case forced both our hands.

Kincaid was his usual self – mishandling the evidence, slavering over our client, timidly poking at Donald Ayers’ body with a stick to the acclaim of the great unseeing public – whilst I observed and deduced, un-noticed, and comforted myself with the promise of sacking the great frightened fool for both our sakes when it was over.

When Moriarty shot at me in the water and I immediately decided to feign my own death I had only thought of the freedom this would give me to continue the case unhampered. I confess that Kincaid’s fear-induced, cack-handed ruination of my tailing of Moriarty enraged me so much that my one thought as I sank deep in the water, Moriarty’s bullets spending harmlessly around me, was _Very well, idiot, see how you get on when I am not available, at all!_

As it turns out, I should have asked myself that question.

The next three days were a revelation. I did indeed work in the freedom of the presumed dead, gathering my threads swiftly and easily, without interference from either the villains or my hired doppleganger…the loneliest, dreariest three days of my life. I had not realized how I’d come to rely on Kincaid’s ear to sound my theories, his wit to amuse me at a bad moment in a case, his rough good nature to cheer me in my dark moods, the fact that he was the sole person in my social circle to whom I could be my most  truthful self. Quite without meaning to do so, I had made an intimate friend whom I now missed like a lost limb – and whom I had already promised to drive away at this case’s end. Oh, Watson, such a clever man, who is the fool now?

The denouement of the whole affair was a lesson to me. Kincaid’s joy at seeing me alive was not acted nor feigned in the least – nor was my own genuine pleasure at seeing him again. My astonishment at how he’d reached the same conclusions as I to arrive in Moriarty’s lair on his own was as nothing to my amazed gratitude for him saving my life that night – several times – by facing down the man who’d terrified him for so long. My timid little jackal had become a roaring lion.

“Mrs Hudson told me how you’d worked the case while I was gone,” I ventured during our cab ride back to Baker Street in the pale hours of early morning.

Kincaid ducked his head. “Went to Henry’s first. It didn’t help, so I went back. I wanted your death to mean…something.”

“I owe you a thousand apologies, old man. I had no idea you would be so affected. I’d thought I could work better in secrecy if Moriarty thought I was dead.”

Kincaid threw up his hands. “And for what? The only reason we both ended up at the Orpheum was because Peter Giles released those half-printed five-pound notes.”

“Yes. An act of incredible courage for a captive of Moriarty’s.” I paused. “As brave as you were tonight.”

Kincaid shook his head. He still would not meet my eyes. “I’ve never been so frightened in my life, Watson. And jumping in after him? I just wasn’t thinking. You saved my life, dragging me back.”

I smiled; warmth blossomed inside me. “Because that’s what friends do.”

He turned to look at me then. Reginald Kincaid was an open book: Shame, relief, gratitude, exhaustion, all warred on that expressive actor’s face of his, and the winner was eagerness. “Friends?”

I nodded. “It’s amazing how much a man can learn by dying.”

I hadn’t realized how I’d missed that broad friendly grin of his. I found myself smiling right back.

But we were approaching Baker Street and the clamoring crowd and reporters; both of us needed to get back into character. I forced my face back into solemn lines. “Holmes, your public awaits,” I said in my best ‘faithful Watson’ voice.

And Reginald Kincaid amazed me all over again by _disappearing_ , and I faced the cool and superior detective that had once been a figment of my imagination and into whom he had breathed living fire – enough to take on the Napoleon of Crime for my sake, armed not with my detective’s wits but with his own courage.

“Then let us not disappoint them, my dear Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes as the cab stopped.  



End file.
